Environmental Justice and the Path to Citizenship: Part 2

This is the second blog in a two-part series on environmental justice and local civic engagement. In the first blog, I spoke with EJ Policy Advocate Aurora Rugerio with CAUSE about the importance of participating in local events and organizing opportunities for residents to share their experiences with environmental injustices and to reach out to local leaders.

While civic engagement can look different for each person, there is no denying that voting can be a major part of it. Underserved communities are often politically ignored. But, the ability to vote can play a major role in driving change. That is why community-led efforts that pair legal support with voter registration matter. And that’s exactly what retired architect Adriene Coulter and immigration attorney Vanessa Frank are doing through Swap Meet Justice, a monthly community engagement fair in Southern California that brings neighbors and community members together with essential resources for civic engagement, health awareness, as well as free legal support for citizenship applications and voter registration.

Adriene and Vanessa’s work matters because environmental injustices continue to affect the community, including limited access to coastal areas and green spaces, pesticide exposure impacting farmworkers, power plant expansion, and more. When communities become eligible to vote, they are better positioned to hold decision-makers accountable and influence policies that affect their health and environment. Regular events like those hosted by Swap Meet Justice/Justicia Tianguera, where legal support, public health resources, and policy updates are  provided by community organizations are critical for communities to stay aware and engaged in advancing environmental justice. 

On Work and Services 

1. Can you tell me about your role and what your organization plays in helping people apply for and gain citizenship? Who volunteers alongside you?

Vanessa: “Swap Meet justice/Justicia Tianguera was formed officially at the Oxnard College swap meet in the summer of 2018, bringing the even-more informal collaboration of Adriene and I into a consistent time and location, offering consistency and stability in the midst of the chaos at that time. Adriene had been conducting voter registration at events throughout the region, and I was leading ‘know your rights’ presentations and enrolling community volunteers to help permanent residents with their US citizenship applications, in addition to green card and DACA renewals. After the first Trump election, people were very concerned about whether it was safe to do apply for immigration programs, whether they were still allowed to vote. Both Adriene and I had been looking for ways to reassure folks that asserting their rights is legitimate, lawful, and the right thing to do. Once we formed Swap Meet Justice, we could demonstrate, in real life, the pipeline from green card to citizen to voter.”

Adriene: “The issue when we joined together was to find a place that was convenient for everyone in the community. The weekend Oxnard College Marketplace was a place that was familiar for the community, families went there anyway, so we just embedded ourselves in a place that was comfortable and secure, where folks felt they could sit down with a stranger and tell their entire life story, which is pretty much what the citizenship application requires.” (Listen to hear more)

2. What are some common challenges or barriers people face when trying to become U.S. citizens?

Vanessa: “[F]irst of all, assessing eligibility – many people do not know whether or not they are eligible. Sometimes those who are most fearful are those with the least obstacles, while those who are most eager are not qualified. But even folks who are eligible will then hesitate because they are concerned about being able to speak, read, and write English, even when they are certainly sufficiently competent. Often, this is a simple hurdle to overcome: many of our elders are eligible to go through the process in their own language. So, we are able to reassure people with that concern. Other people are concerned about the expense, but we can help them prepare fee waiver requests, as well.  Then you get into the next order of concerns: people who may have previous immigration or criminal records they are concerned about. There are folks who have a complicated immigration record, maybe they were deported at some point.” (Listen to hear more)

3. What kind of outreach or education do you provide about civic engagement, like voting, once someone becomes a citizen?

Adriene: “We all clap for about five minutes when someone comes back to Swap Meet Justice to show us their naturalization certificate. Then, right away, we sit them down with one of our teenage volunteers to help them complete their voter registration. Together, they go through it very slowly and explain each part very carefully and what it all means. And It’s a very momentous in a person’s life to fill out their first voter registration form. We used to do precinct voting in Ventura County [California] and I used to run several precincts. And I would get Spanish-speaking youth to come and help brand new voters understand what they were supposed to do next. But now ‘Youth Right to Rise’ is working with these new citizens to show them where to go next once they have gotten their citizenship.”  (Listen to hear more)

4. How do you collaborate with other organizations, like those focused on environmental or community justice, to support the community asking for these resources?

Adriene: “Part of the whole structure of Swap Meet Justice is to bring in the expertise of people in the environmental justice field, other legal fields, and related advocacy groups so people can immediately get involved to change their lives and help their communities. We have forty to fifty different groups that come to Swap Meet justice to lend their expertise to the community and to help them take further part in their community. We encourage those who have come for help with one service, to meet all the other groups and agencies who are helping to strengthen our community, helping people to see, right there in real life, the various intersecting groups which collaborate to make our region a beautiful place to live and who advocate to constantly improve.” (Listen to hear more)

On Connecting Citizenship to Broader Social Change

 5. Why is it important for newly naturalized citizens to understand their role in shaping policies through voting?

Vanessa: “Because that’s why we’re here. The United States is a democracy, it’s a democracy composed of all of the people who live here. That’s the point of this country… It’s a country that’s governed by laws and those laws are written by the representatives of the people who write these laws to solve common problems and to find the best possible solutions for the most number of people. And so we’re not going to write good laws unless we have everybody’s voice included in the process. To have effective and just public policy, we need everybody’s input, especially those who are most directly impacted by any given policy. Everybody needs to explain what their experience is and what their needs are and then we hash it out and  figure out what the best possible solution could be. But if people are systematically excluded or don’t feel invited or they aren’t able to participate then we’re going to get skewed results, we are going to get policies that systematically exclude them.” (Listen to hear more)         

 6. Have you seen communities become more engaged in community or advocacy work after gaining citizenship?

Vanessa: “Definitely! We even have people come to us, who are not eligible for citizenship, but they still ask, ‘Can I just come and volunteer at Swap Meet Justice next month?’ And we are like ‘yeah!’ So we have a lot of folks that just really love being involved and that want to help,  and even people who are undocumented want to come and help. So it’s not just citizens but we have had citizens come back and tell us that they voted and that they were so excited.”  (Listen to hear more)      

7. How do you think your work contributes to broader movements like environmental justice, even if indirectly?

Adriene: “To create something called Swap Meet justice, and to simply lay this thing down every month, something that is dedicated to justice in this community once a month,… happening here. That is a whole awareness-building thing on its own. I know people see the wording either in Spanish or English, and they think, once a month, they go and something will happen that will make their lives better… It raises awareness that justice can be had. There are systemic obstructions that can be solved for many people and if they can be solved, they can be solved here.”  (Listen to hear more)            

8. What are ways youth are being involved in this project? And how can anyone participate?

Vanessa: “We are trying to get people to find ways to contribute back to their community]. A lot of young people, they don’t know where to start. And they think maybe they don’t have the right skills. We confronted this in the early days and still we hear people saying ‘Oh it’s terrible what’s happening with immigrant communities, I wish I was an immigration lawyer.’ You don’t need to be an immigration lawyer, you’ve got language skills, you’ve got organizational skills, you’ve got networking skills, you can make flyers, you can make social media posts, you can fill out applications under the supervision of an attorney. So getting people to really respect their own skills and talents and gifts and getting to work in teams in real life with other people who also care – often there aren’t enough spaces to do that, so hopefully Swap Meet Justice can be that place.  (Listen to hear more)    

Takeaways

The goals of environmental justice and immigrant empowerment intersect deeply because empowering immigrant communities, many of whom are excluded from formal political power, changes who has access to environmental decision-making, elevates marginalized voices in setting environmental priorities, and expands the collective capacity to influence policies that shape community health and safety.

Increasing access to citizenship and the ballot box can strengthen this work, but meaningful civic engagement often begins even before citizenship, with conversations at home and on social media that build awareness and motivate participation in local issues. 

That is why efforts like Swap Meet Justice matter: by bringing together legal support, trusted community organizations, and voter registration resources in one place, they help residents navigate the path to citizenship when needed and stay informed on local issues, whether or not they can vote.

Supporting this kind of community infrastructure is not separate from environmental justice work; it is how communities build the power to participate in decision-making, to be heard, and to hold decision-makers accountable. In the end, civic engagement is the throughline of environmental justice because policies are shaped by the people who can show up, speak out, and stay involved.

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